A.M. Total of 10 miles. Ran the warm-up with Dustin and Derek. Then they turned around and ran back. I went a bit further, and then ran my 2.5 mile tempo.
Total time: 13:43.9 Course: From Utah Lake to Geneva Road.
Splits by quarter: 81, 82, 82, 82, 82, 82, 83, 83, 84, 82 Subjective: Probably the most even I've ever run this adjusted for the terrain. However, for the life of me could not go any faster. Felt that my power was coming from what I would describe as a compact stride. This made me think of a Russian math joke. First, some definitions. A set is considered closed if every sequence in that set that converges to a limit contains that limit. A set is considered bounded, well, if it has boundaries specific to the nature of the beast. In a one-dimensional space (a line of real numbers) the boundaries would be a lower bound number and an upper bound number. In a two-dimensional space (XY plane) the boundaries would be a rectangle. In 3-D a rectangular parallelepiped. Speaking of the parallelepiped. In my informal polling, I discovered that most Americans do not know what it is. In Russia, this geometric object is sufficiently familiar to the general public that it is mentioned in a popular song. But we have digressed. A set is called compact if it is both closed and bounded. Now the joke. A mathematician says to his girlfriend - "you are so compact". She asks what that means. "Well, you are so closed and bounded". In running I would describe stride compactness as the amount of control you feel over your legs. The metaphor I like to use is if somebody stuck a pen in between your toes you'd be able to write small letters legibly with your foot. The control over your legs and feet allows you to generate maximum push-off power with minimum effort.
Well, I felt while hitting the 82s that I was able to maintain some semblance of compactness in my stride. After that I began to lose it. I still managed to maintain the pace (adjusted for the terrain, the last mile had a small uphill), but it took a lot of effort. I think next week I willl replace this tempo with 10x200.
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